After

It didn’t fall so much as it unfolded.
One minute, the sky was a familiar ceiling,
and the next, a bruise began to spread from the center out,
smothering the sun until the light felt thin,
brittle enough to snap between my fingers.

You don’t realize how much the light holds you up
until it’s gone.

Now, the air is thick with the soot of burned-out stars.
The iron draft of a closing door has changed everything,
it’s a predatory thing.
It’s in my bones now, pulling my shoulders toward the dirt,
turning my footsteps into heavy prayers that no one hears.
My knees have forgotten the habit of standing.

There is a cold, dense knot where my chest used to be,
a collapsed star, a private black hole
feeding on the scraps of my better days.
It doesn’t just take, it erases.
It has swallowed the before, the maybe, and the us,
leaving only this heavy, crippled silence
where my heart used to beat.

@doddyokelo

Give Me Time

Give me time,
hold the reins soft in your hands.
I’m moulding a future from raw clay,
shaping it with my own hands,
climbing a hill I never stop sliding from.

Be patient with me.
I am giving the last of my breath to build more breath,
praying into the night with worn hope,
waiting for heaven to write back.

God will answer,
I feel it burning somewhere just beyond reach.
But pressure?
Pressure will crush the promise before it flowers.
It will sour the love we planted,
bruise it until it tastes like curse instead of blessing.

Don’t turn your eyes toward the neon world,
the staged lives and filtered fantasies.
You know we feast from little,
yet I still stretch it into something sweeter
so you can glimpse the life I swear I’m carving for us.

But if you make my ribs your stepping stones,
if you demand the world today,
I might not survive to see tomorrow.

I don’t want to die young.
I need silence, space, and peace,
not to escape you,
but to return with enough abundance
to lift us both
into the life that waits.

So hold me gently,
walk beside me,
and one day,
we’ll rise together.

@doddyokelo

Rivers of My Own Making

There is no universe in which I am sitting down to read how someone built a whole cereal shop from a single grain of rice. Never. I respect the effort it took to type all that optimism, but no. Your road doesn’t bend like mine, and I refuse to be shamed into feeling inadequate simply because my idea of joy moves to a different sun. If you want to pray, pray. I pray too, my brother. We are all sinners anyway. The only difference is how we manage our sins. Mine are personal. I enjoy them quietly and carry the consequences alone. Yours arrive with collateral damage, cloaked in lies, dipped in theft, and sanctified from the pulpit. A pastor from hell, if we’re being honest. Cut me some slack, man.

2025 has been incredible. Financially, the fireworks stayed away, but the lessons arrived on time. Lessons that stay. I learned how to take care of myself by leaning into what I love. I learned that some opinions bloom like flowers but are made of dust, pretty to see, hollow to hold. I learned the strength that lives in subtle sighs, the subtle mastery in watching without interference, the rare discipline of letting words fall around me without reaching for a reply. And perhaps the hardest lesson of all. When the lights dim, the applause fades, and the crowd vanishes into the night, only your own shadow remains. That truth seeps in like a silent river, carrying its weight with quiet insistence, tracing the contours of the soul, unseen yet unstoppable, leaving freedom in its wake.

I carry no resolutions scribbled on paper for 2026. Free of banners of ambition and untouched by public drumbeats, I carry instead intentions. I plan to be better. To build myself financially. To chase what I want without hesitation or apology. And yes, I plan to cut people off, gently but firmly, when their presence drains more than it gains. Whether I leave or stay, your life will continue uninterrupted. I’ve made peace with that long ago. I plan to do more business, take bolder risks, and travel wider, seeing places for their stories, feeling the streets beneath my feet, tasting lives outside my own. Unfettered by heralded plans, letting the quiet flowering of my journey reveal its own story.

Still, gratitude stays. Deeply. For the hands that steadied me when my footing slipped. For those who pulled me out of trenches without demanding explanations. For those who trusted my strength enough to place opportunity in my hands. For that, a special medal goes to Sheila Chepkirui Yegon. Some people are mere passing notes in your life, others are chords that resonate. Sheila is a river of melodies, a living network that carries you forward, flowing steady, connecting what was, what is, and what could be. May God widen her path and multiply her grace.

And always, my brother Stephen Ochieng (Soo Ochieng), take your flowers, bana. Always. We remain stubborn believers in the impossible, still dreaming with the audacity of people who refuse to shrink their visions too early.

This isn’t a storm, it’s alignment,
It’s growth,
It’s choosing your lane, and driving without explaining the route.

Solo Drive

I’ve marked no map with ink or public pride,
To show the woods where I intend to go.
The things I seek have nowhere left to hide,
And what I reap is what I choose to sow.
I take the path where fewer shadows bide,
And leave the crowds to talk of what they know.
The fence I mend is built of quiet stone,
To keep the peace and part the draining guest.
A man can walk a standard mile alone,
And find in silence all he needs of rest.
For every seed of will that I have grown,
I ask no leave to put it to the test.
So let the wheels engage their rhythmic song,
Across the hills and through the turning lane.
I owe no word to prove where I belong,
Or why I chose the sun above the rain.
The drive is short, the inner light is strong,
I go my way, and need not explain.

@doddyokelo

How It Feels To Be Home

I am afraid,of the dark that breathes and shifts,
It bends and folds around the corners of my mind,
Where unseen eyes wait in shadowed silence,
And whispers crawl like wind through broken glass.
The night becomes a mouth, open and waiting,
And I am its trembling sound, half-alive, half-lost,
Reaching out for the sound of your name,
To anchor me where the light once stayed.

I see them, those figures born of fear’s design,
They lean against the walls like memories uninvited,
Their outlines blur in the dim, uncertain air,
And I cannot tell if they move or merely breathe.
They haunt the corners of my sight like regret,
Soft, cruel, and patient in their waiting,
Till your voice, gentle as dawn, loosens the dark,
And the room remembers how to breathe again.

I hear them too, the voices that hiss and murmur,
They tell me of endings that never began,
Of love that rusts beneath the weight of time.
They are not real, I tell myself, they are smoke,
Yet they know the cracks in my courage by name,
They slip through the seams of my silence,
Till your presence returns, steady and golden,
And their cruel chorus falls to dust.

Without you, fear builds its kingdom in my chest,
A fortress of shadows and unanswered prayers,
But when you come, the darkness loses its teeth.
You are the dawn that rinses the night of its grief,
The calm after thunder, the stillness after rain.
You make the corners smooth again,
And I, once a ghost in my own house,
Find my pulse, steady and sure, in your light.

So come, my calm, my gentle resurrection,
Wrap your warmth around this frightened skin,
Hold me like a promise you mean to keep,
Till the dark forgets my name,
Till every whisper learns to fade,
Till the moon watches us without envy,
And the stars sing softly of peace.

Walk with me, down these hollow streets of thought,
Where my footsteps answer old fears,
Let your hand fit mine like sunlight fits morning,
Let our shadows melt into one.
For with you, the night forgets its hunger,
And even silence dares to dream again.

Come, fill this hollow where my heart once broke,
Plant your laughter in the cracks of my chest,
Let love grow where fear once built walls,
Let your light spill over my broken fields.
With you, every barren thing learns to bloom again,
The air tastes of spring, and I remember,
How it feels to be unafraid,
How it feels to be home.

So come, be my light, my refuge, my calm,
Walk with me until the dark forgets its way,
Hold me till the world grows quiet and kind.
For when you are here, the night stands still,
And even my ghosts bow in surrender,
For they, too, know your name means dawn.

@doddyokelo

Daughter of The Mountain

I met her on an afternoon
when the sun burned low,
spilling gold across the earth
as though the day itself leaned close
to let slip its quiet confessions.

She was slim-thick,
a flame held steady in the wind,
with a presence that filled the space
more surely than height or breadth could command.
Her skin bore the quiet radiance
of fertile Kenyan earth after rain,
luminous, alive with the memory of rivers.

Her beauty was the beauty that stays,
like a song remembered long
after the singer has gone.
Her eyes were wide, dark pools,
holding the innocence of unspoken dreams,
and the fierce pride of the hills,
green and ancient,
keepers of stories older than memory.
When she looked, it was not merely at you,
it was into you,
as though the soul were something
she had always known,
and only sought to confirm.

Her laughter was small, quick,
yet it carried,
like the delicate chiming of cowbells
drifting from a far valley.
Her movements, precise, almost shy,
the way a swallow folds its wings before flight,
yet within them was a grace
no stage could rehearse.

She was not made of ornaments or excess
but of silences,
of natural songs,
of that soft balance between fragility
and unyielding strength.

To call her beautiful
would be to simplify what was infinitely complex.
She was the outline of twilight
against the ridge,
the fragrance of tea leaves
crushed between fingers,
the silence of evening rain on tin roofs.
She was the Mountain itself,
its promise, its mystery,
its unbroken spirit made flesh.

And in her presence,
I felt the world pause,
as though even time leaned in
to watch her pass.

@doddyokelo

Dreams of You

There’s a smooth quiet caressed across the night tonight, a velvet calm that drifts between heartbeats and carries your name upon the slow breath of the wind. I can almost hear your laughter threading through the silence like moonlight through lace, reminding me what peace feels like when love finds its way home.

To be loved by you is to rest inside calm waters after a storm, warmth flowing like quiet light, a tender ease that tells my heart it has arrived. It’s not mere affection, it’s devotion that mends the soul and slows even the restless stars.

I find myself missing your company more than words could dare explain. You have that gentle way of turning absence into longing and longing into poetry. Even from afar, your presence stays like a soft perfume in the air, written through my thoughts, through the gentle cadence of my breath, through the still corners of my room.

Tonight, the world feels a little bluer, a little emptier, because I want you here beside me. I crave the comfort of your voice, the safety of your arms, the laughter that folds itself into love. You’ve become the quiet I reach for when everything else grows too loud.

So as the night settles and dreams begin to bloom, may you rest easy knowing you’re deeply loved, by me, endlessly and truly. Sleep beautifully, my love. Good night.

@doddyokelo

We Met Again

I saw her again,
the girl I once loved.
Time had touched her kindly.
She wore a white dress, soft as a prayer,
and it clung to her form
like the wind belongs to the sea.

She was lovelier than I remembered,
not just in face,
but in the quiet grace she carried.
Clean. Still.
Like a page I might’ve turned too soon.

The dress, white as chapel vows,
did justice to every curve,
each one a line in the poem I once left unfinished.
She smiled,
not bitter, not bold, just enough
to stir something old in me.

She said I looked different too,
more like the man she always pictured beside her.
Stronger, quieter, maybe even kinder.

And for a moment,
in the gentle silence between us,
I think we both wondered,
not with regret,
but with a wistful sort of hope,
if the pages we wrote apart
could still make sense together.

@okelododdychitchats

I Miss You More

I feel it everywhere.
In the quiet moments,
in the places you used to sit,
in the way the air feels a little heavier
without your presence in it.

There’s a space,
not loud or dramatic,
just a soft kind of empty
that follows me around.

I try to fill it with noise,
with work, with words,
but nothing really fits.
Because it’s you that’s missing.

I don’t just miss you in the big ways,
I miss the small things too.
The glance. The laugh. The comfort.
And somehow,
I just keep missing you more.

@okelododdychitchats

Crunchy Honest Chips

I was born just outside my father’s home. I mean outside the fence. Not in a hospital. Not in some sterile maternity ward with nurses who smell like Dettol and sigh through masks. No. I came into this world the traditional way, on ancestral soil, barefoot and bold, like a true son of Asembo. My grandmother delivered me. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it until my tongue is weary, it’s something to be proud of. It’s raw. It’s traditional. And I guess, so am I.

Asembo is about 15 minutes away from Raila’s Opoda Farm. But this is not about him. This is about home. Or the idea of it. Because although I was born there, I didn’t grow up there. In fact, it took me seventeen years to return. And when I finally did, with the awkward gait of a visitor in his own past, I found our home was no longer a home. It had become a farm.

The only proof we were ever there are the graves—traces of my father, my uncle, my grandmother, and my grandfather. The cement doesn’t crack. It holds secrets. They told me the land is mine now. Or at least part of it. My father was the last born, and in our traditions, that means the home was his. By extension, now mine. But what do you do with a piece of land full of ghosts?

There’s another parcel—12 acres or so. I didn’t earn it. Didn’t break my back for it. Didn’t argue with chiefs or attend land tribunal hearings in stuffy rooms with men who say “utu ni utu” before betraying you for a bribe. It was passed to me like a baton in a relay. A gift from the dead. So no, I’m not bragging. And even if I was, who really wants to sweat for something they can get for free? This is Kenya, after all. We queue for handouts and call it luck.

I grew up in bits and pieces—Homa Bay, Kisumu, Rongo. Like a nomad in search of permanence. In 2007, my mother built a modest house in Rongo. That’s home now. We live there with strangers who’ve since become family, the kind you don’t choose but grow into like an oversized sweater that slowly starts to fit. In Rongo and almost everywhere else in Luo Nyanza, people intermarry—Luos, Luhyas, Kisiis. But not Kikuyus. No, Kikuyus are where the line is drawn.

Luos hate Kikuyus and Kikuyus hate Luos. That’s the story we were handed by the colonialists—wrapped in propaganda and sprinkled with enough suspicion to last generations. Divide and rule. And rule they did. Now we inherit the hate like old family furniture we’re too proud to throw out. We say things like: “A Luo is a witch with a sack of rituals on his back” or “A Kikuyu is greedy and selfish” or that “Kikuyu women kill their husbands.” What is that? That’s not wisdom. That’s premium-grade poetic cow dung.

Ask anyone for proof, and they’ll stutter like a bad radio signal.

I don’t believe in what I haven’t seen. I won’t condemn a whole tribe because Otieno once borrowed your charger and never returned it. Or because Wanjiku blocked you on WhatsApp after you bought her chips kuku.

If that makes me fallacious, then call me a walking fallacy.

And listen, Kikuyu women are beautiful. Not the stereotypical light-skinned, big-chested, flat-behind and thin legs that don’t match the body types, those that your uncles warned you about. No. These days, they come in thick—size sevens with curves that look like they were negotiated in parliament. Faces sculpted like the gods used cheekbones as currency. And thighs, God help us, thighs the colour of roasted cashews—thighs that can save entire nations.

I’m dating one. A Kikuyu. Six years now, give or take a few breaks that almost broke us. Her name is Koi, but if you know her like I do, you call her Spiky. And Spiky? Spiky is divine.

Spiky is what you’d get if elegance had a baby with audacity. She walks like confidence and still laughs like she was raised by love. Her skin is caramel dipped in honey, the kind that makes you wonder if sunlight took lessons from her. Her smile is a gospel that can turn a hard man soft. She’s smart, too. Smart with the kind of intelligence that knows when to speak, when to keep quiet, and when to look at you in a way that makes you question all your life choices.

Her body is poetry. The kind of body that makes you want to write odes in traffic. Her mind is a map. Her heart is a home I keep returning to. Even when I say I’m done.

I am not here to convert you. I am just here to say—love is not tribal. Neither is beauty. Neither is home.

Some of us were just born outside, by grandmothers with hands strong enough to deliver a future.

And maybe that’s enough.

It was 2AM or thereabouts. You know that hour that’s neither here nor there—when the silence feels staged, like the night is watching you back. I wasn’t asleep, of course. My insomnia is back. It always returns like an old lover who doesn’t knock, just walks in and makes itself comfortable.

Spiky was up too, prepping for one of her strange shifts. She works those ungodly hours, where your body wants to rest, but capitalism wants a report submitted by 5:45AM. I decided to keep her company, texting back and forth. In the middle of our banter—whose contents I won’t get into, partly because I’m lazy and partly because it might send you off on a tangent—we veered into a detour.

“There’s a Mugithi na Ndumo at Red Room from 2PM,” she texted. “Come with me?”

Mugithi is a Kikuyu genre—think of it as country music that drank a full bottle of Muratina and decided to wear a hat. Ndumo is the dance—the erratic, shoulder-driven, hip-twisting rhythmic warfare. It’s like watching a fight that no one wants to break up. I don’t speak Kikuyu. I know only “mbesha shigana?” which loosely translates to “how much money are we wasting here?” But I said yes. Because love is also showing up where you don’t belong and hoping the rhythm saves you.

Google Maps says Red Room is in Kilimani. Technically true. It’s on Adlife Plaza. But if you follow those blue dots on Google blindly, you’ll find yourself in West Pokot or emotionally lost. Take my advice: get to Yaya Centre, take that left turn. Adlife Plaza is a few blocks in, across from Shujah Mall. Red Room lives on the first floor.

The place is cool. Genuinely cool. It’s shaped like an L, as if someone folded the club and forgot to unfold it. The counter sits at the center like a bartender god. There’s a stage—clean, slightly elevated, and a DJ booth carved with intention, not just dumped there. The seats in the regular area are metallic, but not the koroga kind. These ones have cushions that hold your secrets. They are comfortable. The VIP area, of course, has better seats—those white kinyozi-waiting-area chairs, only here they’ve been baptized and saved.

The roof is translucent, high enough not to threaten your dignity, and there’s space to dance without knocking a stranger’s elbow. The floor is plastic turf. That fake grass that doesn’t pretend to be real anymore. The kind you’d find in a cool rooftop bar, or a child’s playground where no one gets hurt when they fall—except emotionally.

Our waiter is polite. Genuine. The kind that makes you want to tip even when you’re broke. We order goat meat and chips not fries. I refuse to gentrify potatoes. Spiky, glowing like the first sip of good wine, is in wide-legged purple pants stitched by a fundi who understands women. Her top—a crocheted piece of African fabric art—is from the same fundi. She looks like Nairobi confidence dressed in culture. I’m in wide-legged pants too (no judgment), a free shirt I got from Dura Poa and my trusted white Converse. I order a litre of Muratina because, well, when in Rome… get tipsy on their traditions.

Spiky orders two bottles of Kenya Originals.

The food comes and we eat because what else do you do when food comes? Their meat is soft. Tender like it was raised by a grandmother with a kind voice. The chips are golden and crunchy—honest chips, not those oily, sad ones that taste like heartbreak.

Then comes Gasheni. She wasn’t on the lineup, just a curtain raiser. But sometimes curtain raisers leave you wondering why the main act even bothered. She did well. She cleared the path like John the Baptist. And when DJ Dibull came on, he walked through like the Messiah of sound. He played magic. I danced. I didn’t understand a single lyric but my body understood the beat, and sometimes, that’s all that matters.

Tony Young came in next. One hour and thirty minutes of pure Kikuyu Vaibu. By the time Waithaka Wa Jane got on stage, I think the crowd was tired. Or maybe he was just too mellow for 11PM energy.

Ah, I almost forgot—DJ 44. That man spins like he’s in love with every beat. Like each song owes him rent.

At our table, a couple and a lady joined us. Later, a guy. All of them were vibes. They figured out pretty quickly that I wasn’t Kikuyu—maybe it was the way I danced, like someone dodging potholes. But they embraced me. One of them told me, “If you can’t beat us, join us.”

So I did.

And I’ve invited them to the Luo Festival on the 9th of August. There, I’ll beat them. And they’ll join me. And we’ll call it unity.

Mugithi was greatness. Pure, fermented, cultural greatness. The kind that reminds you that sometimes all it takes is a beat for you to remember how good it feels to just live.

Thank you for this Spiky. I loved it Baby!

@okelododdychitchats

AND YET, WE VOTE

WHO PROTECTS THE PEOPLE FROM THE POLICE ?

You may write us off,
dismiss us ,
ignore us in Parliament halls padded with stolen wealth,
but still, we see

We are the country beneath your motorcades,
the hands that build and break,
the voices cracking in the dust
because hope costs too much now.

And yet,
we vote.

We vote for thieves in clean suits

We vote for wolves draped in our flags,

Enough.

We are tired.
Tired of job descriptions reading “Must be connected.”
Tired of degrees gathering dust
while our dreams starve in silence.

We are tired of joblessness turned into weaponry,
young men hired cheap to kill our own voices,
paid to break bones they’ve never healed in their own lives.

Tired of watching peaceful protesters
shot dead,
while those who loot in daylight
are guarded like royalty.

Tired of asking:
“Who protects the people from the police?”

Tired of staged outrage,
press conferences filled with air,
and politicians who only remember their roots
when it’s time to lie again.

You fight for positions, not for people.
You dine with the devil,
then kneel in churches too small for your sins.

You debate your egos on live TV
as our people dig trenches
not for roads,
but for graves.

You die to be seen.
But we die because we’re ignored.

Kenya is choking.
On debt.
On lies.
On the stink of promises unkept.

We are not asking.
We are telling.

This time, we vote with memory.
With pain.
With names.
With tears that learned how to speak.

This time,
you will not scare us with teargas.
You will not buy us with t-shirts.
You will not distract us with empty tribal drums.

We will remember who was silent when we bled.
We will remember who smiled while we starved.
We will remember who disappeared our brothers
and called us TREASONOUS CRIMINALS.

We are not the children you once fooled.
We have grown teeth.
We have grown rage.
And we are coming.

So let the ballot tremble.
Let your seats shake.
Let the ground beneath your stolen homes shift.

Because next time,
we are not just voting.

We are reclaiming.

And if you still don’t listen,
then hear this:

We are not afraid.
We are not asleep.
We are not yours.
Not anymore.

@Okelododdychitchats

#RUTOMUSTGO #ENDPOLICEBRUTALITY #RAGEANDCOURAGE
#JUSTICEFORELIJOSHUA